Navigation & Survivorship News
Whether your manager meets with you monthly, semi-annually, or annually to discuss your performance evaluation, you need to take it upon yourself to decide what your performance and professional goals should be beforehand.
Accurate recordkeeping is important for patient safety, quality of care, and system improvements. Grant-funded navigators use data to show the funder the impact of their work with patients.
This week, April 10-14, is National Tumor Registrars Week or National Cancer Registrars Week. A huge thank you and acknowledgement of all the work of cancer registrars that affect patient care and ways they help support the objectives of nurse navigation! Here's a major shout out to all our friends in this department!
Many cancer patients practice complementary or alternative medicine, and don’t even know it. They take extra vitamins, get acupuncture, use various herbs, etc. Though such things may seem harmless, they actually may impact the treatments they are receiving that are prescribed by their doctors.
Patients come into the healthcare system with various levels of health literacy, experience, and comfort with the professionals and systems in which they find themselves. Patient navigators work to assess the patient’s capacity to self-advocate and to make informed decisions regarding their care. Navigators also work behind the scenes with members of the health care team to educate them about each patient’s unique needs including their strengths as well as areas where they may need more assistance.
Most navigators will find transportation to be a major barrier to care no matter where they practice. The rural areas provide a distance challenge, the urban areas face missed bus connections and the suburban falls between the two. It is not surprising that 4 million patients miss appointments just because they don't have a ride each year.
The patient navigator plays a vital role in assuring that the patient has access to the resources and services that they need to optimize their wellness. Ongoing support to encourage adherence to the agreed-upon treatment plan is also critical.
Many navigators have enjoyed the increased communication that electronic health records have delivered over the recent years. Prior to going live with our electronic medical record (EMR), our navigators had a read-only view and this encouraged consistent teaching along the care continuum as patients transitioned across the healthcare settings.
More women for the last 2 decades have chosen to get their careers established first, then plan for a family second--resulting in them having children in their 40s. Though it can be tricky due to their ovaries already slowing down compared to how they functioned in their 20s and 30s, it remains a common theme among career women today.
If your newly diagnosed patient meets the criteria for warranting a genetics consultation and testing, do the necessary paperwork to have it happen BEFORE surgery!
